Page 115 of Ruthless Daddy
“Anything.”
I held her hands. I felt her pulse, calm and steady.
“First time I touched you,” I said, “You bit my hand.”
She laughed. “You deserved it.”
“I did. I still have the scar. I’m glad for it.”
She squeezed my fingers.
I said, “I lied to you once, and I told you I never would again. I haven’t. I won’t.”
She nodded, serious.
“I learned something from you,” I said. “In the kitchen, in the field, in the cellar in Malta. I learned that a man doesn’t have to stand still. There is power in taking life’s moments.”
I let that sit.
She reached up and touched the side of my face. “You did,” she said.
I took the ring from my pocket. I showed it to her in my open palm. The gold was dull, worn to an oval at the bottom. The stone was set crooked, a white dot with no shine. My mother’s. The one thing that had come with me through everything.
I said, “It isn’t much.”
She shook her head.
I said, “I want you to have it.”
She said, “Are you asking?”
I got down on one knee, in the dirt, between the rows.
I said, “Will you marry me, Angela.”
She made a sound I had never heard from her before—a single, shocked exhale, half laugh, half cry.
“Yes,” she said. “Yes, Pietro.”
She dropped down beside me. She kissed me, hard, dirt and all. Her arms locked around my neck and she pressed her forehead to mine, and the tears came, but the good kind, the kind that washed instead of burned.
I put the ring on her finger. It fit. It looked right.
We sat there until the sun dropped behind the bluff and the sky started to turn.
She said, “I never thought I’d have this. Any of this.”
I said, “You deserve it.”
She said, “So do you.”
We stayed on the ground, in the vines, with the river below and the sky above, and I held her, and I held everything I wanted.
Dinnerwasonthefarmhouse terrace. Marco had outdone himself: three courses, each with its own bottle, and a fourth for the toasts. Serafina had made the pasta, by hand, and Angela had helped, though I suspected her main contribution was tasting the sauce and making approving noises. The baby slept in a basket under the edge of the table, a small fist poking out from the blanket.
Sal, who by some miracle had decided to stay the night, sat at the far end, hands folded, watching. He looked more relaxed than I had ever seen him.
The sun was down, but the afterglow carried enough light for the river to show blue in the distance. Every now and then, Marco would get up and check the temperature of the wine, or the state of the roast in the oven, or just to say something to the baby, who responded by snoring at him.
